Sun Flash Accelerator F40 PCIe Cards must be configured for optimum flash card performance. You should take the following into account when configuring your server system for installed Sun Flash Accelerator F40 PCIe Cards:
Follow performance guidelines for implementiing Sun Flash Accelerator F40 PCIe Card 8k block tuning. The Sun Flash Accelerator F40 PCIe Card is designed to provide best performance for data transfers that are multiples of 8k size, and using addresses that are 8k aligned. Partitions should be aligned to start on 8k boundaries.
Oracle Solaris OS automatically ensures 8k alignment when the default SMI label type is selected. If a label of type EFI is desired, care must be taken to specify and ensure 8k alignment: the default start sector of 34 for EFI labels is not an 8k aligned value. Use the partition subcommand of the Solaris format command to change the start sector to 48, or any other 8k aligned value. Note that there are 512B per sector.The ZFS file system automatically aligns partitions to start on 8k boundaries when a full disk is allocated to ZFS (recommended). If you allocate individual EFI partitions to a ZFS pool, ensure the partition is 8k-aligned as discussed above. Refer to:
ZFS Tuning Guide: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29022/chapterzfs-flash.html
Card Optimization Guidelines in Sun Flash Accelerator F40 PCIe Card Users Guide
Follow cache flush recommendations for servers with ZFS and installed Sun FlashAccelerator F40 PCIe Cards. Refer to the ZFS Tuning Guide for cache flush recommendations. See http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/html/E29022/chapterzfs-flash.html.
Do not disable power management in BIOS menus, to avoid a reduction in card performance if the server is reset.
When configuring Power Safe mode, CPU deep cstates should be disabled in/etc/system files.
Install the latest software and firmware for servers with installed Sun Flash Accelerator F40 PCIe Cards. See Keeping Drivers and Firmware Up To Date.